How Do I Know I am Context-Driven?

How Do I Know I am Context-Driven?

I am one of the founders of the Context-Driven school of software testing thought. This is a paradigm that stands apart from the Agile or the "Factory" ways of seeing the world. The Factory paradigm is artifact-focused rather than humanist and heuristic. People who embrace the Factory paradigm speak and act as if humans are a temporary nuisance to be tolerated until we can automate everything. Agile, in practice, is focused on ritual "best practices," although in principle it is also humanist.

Context-driven essentially means a rejection of best practices in favor of skilled people solving problems. This is often scary for managers who fantasize about controlling every detail of the development and testing process, because it requires trust; it requires the development of a craftsmanship culture.

These are the slides from one of my presentations about Context-Driven Testing.